Three days after the event, Scholtes was charged with second-degree murder. He was apparently immersed in PlayStation video games at the time his daughter died.
Scholtes first said that he didn’t want to wake Parker, so he left her in the vehicle for 30 minutes with the AC on after returning from shopping at around 12:30 PM.
But subsequent court documents showed that he’d been gaming for nearly three hours when Erika Scholtes, his wife, got home at four o’clock in the afternoon and found the kid asleep in the SUV.
A dad in Arizona has been charged with murder after leaving his daughter in a hot car for 3 hours. Christopher Scholtes (37) said that he did not want to wake his daughter up in the middle of her nap, and the vehicle was running with the AC on when he went inside. Parker Scholtes… pic.twitter.com/zier0Wk0Oh
— Rose (@901Lulu) July 14, 2024
It was Scholtes’s confession that he was aware the car would turn off after 30 minutes. According to the New York Post, anesthesiologist Erika texted her husband a string of disturbing messages as they hurried Parker to the hospital.
“I told you to stop leaving them in the car, how many times have I told you,” she said. Then she went on to say, “We’ve lost her, she was perfect.”
